03.05.08

“Although researchers have long agreed that girls have superior language abilities than boys, until now no one has clearly provided a biological basis that may account for their differences.

For the first time — and in unambiguous findings — researchers from Northwestern University and the University of Haifa show both that areas of the brain associated with language work harder in girls than in boys during language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on different parts of the brain when performing these tasks.“

What the researchers found is that language areas in girls’ brains worked harder when they were being tested by reading or auditory means.

In boys’ brains, however it was the hearing or visual centers that worked harder.

Researchers speculate that there may have been an evolutionary advantage to men being able to focus their hearing and sight in avoiding dangers.

But I’ve been saying that all along.

Tests were run on boys and girls age 9 to 13. They’re going to have to duplicate the test on adults in order to make sure that this is not something that the younguns outgrow.

07.06.07

Yes, there are definable differences in the behavior of men and women, differences that can be attributed to reproductive strategies. Some of these I have speculated and written about before. This article pulls it all together nicely, and in a quicker read than any book by Stephen Pinker.

05.27.07

Nah, I was kidding. I don’t seriously expect guys to understand why a member of their own gender might voluntarily decide to do something with a good potential for not only removing him from the gene pool, but causing a great deal of pain and suffering to tender parts of his anatomy at the same time.

03.30.07

“New research shows it takes one part of the brain to start concentrating and another to be distracted. This discovery could help scientists develop better treatments for attention deficit disorder.

“This ability to willfully focus your attention is physically separate in the brain from distracting things grabbing your attention,” said Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He led the study, published in Friday’s edition of the journal Science.”

So what they are saying is that these students would pay attention if they perceived their lives were in danger. Perhaps if we threaten them with wild bears…?

The bottom part of his graphic had nothing to do with the article, but I guess they thought it was close enough to serve as an illustration. It’s interesting. You could explain away a lot of stereotypes of rednecks and such based on this information.

01.18.07

I’ve just come across your site and I am intrigued and impressed. Having listened to a recording of yours on Keen, I know this is a mix of fantasy and reality but I’m going to pose a few serious questions/comments in the hope that you respond in earnest.

I became interested in the plight of boys’ education while reading a several page spread in a weekend newspaper back in 2000. It dealt with the educational symposium held in Seattle that year. The focus was on boys’ inability to compete with the girls intellectually. One solution proffered was to have boys enter school a year later than girls, which would help to offset their disadvantage of being less mature than their female classmates.

While I am sure it would be advantageous not to start students who are not yet physically or emotionally ready for school, a study has shown that holding back students, even at the start of schooling, will make them more likely to drop out before completing high school. The effect was attributed to the students being older than their peers. One could only guess whether holding back most or all boys would have that same effect.

01.05.07

During one week in September of 2005, five giant squid washed up on beaches near Vigo, Spain. The largest was more than twelve meters long.

Apparently giant squid strandings are not as unusual in Vigo as they would be on my local beach. Nevertheless, since the creatures are rare and hard to observe when they’re alive, scientists take the opportunity to study those that strand on beaches.

One interesting thing they found, something seen before in other strandings, was a male who had inseminated himself accidentally – or so they surmised. This had been observed previously with other males found washed up on beaches.

What happens is that the normal mating activity involves a male grabbing a female and holding her long enough to inject her with a packet of sperm. Since she probably doesn’t want to be injected, and she’s bigger than he is, the male has developed the longest penis in the world to safely reach her. According to the article,

The male’s sexual organ is actually a bit like a high-pressure fire hose and is normally nearly as long as his body – excluding legs and head.

So it seems that a penis that big is a little hard to aim properly.

Or maybe the problem is that the researchers just don’t think like giant squid. Maybe the pain of being injected with this was less than the pleasure of letting it go. Perhaps, given the fact that he was in the process of stranding on a beach, he decided to do it once more for old time’s sake, and masturbated, injecting himself with the packet, giving new meaning to the phrase, “Go fuck yourself.”